Owls 393 



have vanished. Even donkeys are now rare; and as for 

 horses, I do not remetnber to have seen one during the seven 

 weeks we spent in Nubia." 



Between Aswan and Abu Simbel almost all the birds that 

 were seen were either on the wing, or perched in the tops of 

 partially submerged sont trees. Sometimes we ran near 

 enough these trees to allow of identification of the birds, at 

 other times they were clearly seen but had to be assigned to 

 the class of birds unidentified. Of these there were several, 

 both in Egypt and Nubia, that by me had to be remembered 

 in the great class of the unknown. 



OWLS, AS REGARDED BY THE SCIENTIST, THE 



THE AGRICULTURIST, AND THE 



SPORTSMAN. 



BY R. W. SHUFELDT. 

 (Photographs from Life by the Author.) 



When Doctor R. Bowdler Sharpe, of the British Museum, 

 published his invaluable work entitled A Hand-List of the 

 Genera and Species of Birds, he recognized no fewer than 

 thirty genera of Owls in the world's avifauna, and, according 

 to him, they have been created to contain 316 species of these 

 very interesting birds. This classification was made in 1899, 

 since which time there have doubtless been many more spe- 

 cies added to the list. Some of these thirty genera contain 

 but one species, while others contain all the way from two 

 to eighty, the latter number being found in the genus Scops. 

 Besides these existing species of owls science recognizes 

 quite a^ number of extinct forms, which are known tO' us only 

 through their fossil remains. 



The owls of the United States, according to the last Check- 

 List of the American Ornithologists' Union, fall into twelve 

 different genera, and there are at least forty-three species 

 and subspecies of them. As in the case of the Old World 

 forms, too, several species of large fossil owls have been dis- 



